Episode 27

Connor barely stopped himself before he ran into the end of a hallway.  He had been running for what felt like hours, and he had come to a dead end.  He groaned and darted back the direction he had come.  At that end, he found another door, which he assumed he'd come through on his way, though he didn't recall it.  When he tried to open it, but it opened to a blank wall.  He stopped and looked back at the other dead end, which now seemed closer, and thought for a moment that his mind was playing tricks on him.

“No. They’re playing tricks on my mind.”  He took a deep breath and waited.  When nothing happened, he called out, clenching his fist, “Okay, you’ve got me! What do you want?”

A door opened at the other end of the hall, and a man in a lab coat stepped out.  “You’re looking for the girl,” he stated, and it wasn't a question.

Connor nodded slowly, taking a step forward.  The man gestured toward the open door, keeping eye contact.

“Bring her to me,” Connor demanded.

The man shrugged and silently left through the door.

Connor crossed his arms. “It's a trap,” he said under his breath.  Walking up to the door, he stood to one side of it and waited.

When heavy footsteps approached the door and it opened, Connor grabbed the door and banged it into the guard’s head.  The man fell to the floor, knocked out. “You're not getting me, not this time,” he growled.

He stepped over the man and headed into the hall beyond.   It was shadowy, with very few lights.  A door was cracked open at the end of the passage, and Connor walked quickly and quietly toward it.  He listened at the door for a moment, and, hearing nothing, walked in.

The room he stepped into looked half like a demented surgery facility and half like an electronics armory.  An operating table equipped with an overhead light stood in the center of the room, whose light was the only one in the room.  A stainless steel table poked out of a dark, curtained area in the corner, and he walked over to it. On the table were surgical tools and a large plastic case with small electrical wire inside, wound up and tossed in carelessly. Along the walls were brackets that looked to have supported two large pieces of equipment, but they were gone.

There must have been some kind of crazy operation, he thought. Connor examined the operating table. The sheet had been removed, and there was no trace of blood. What could they have done to her?

There was another door near the curtain.  He opened it and looked into a bright white room.

And there was Miah.